wouldn't it just be easier to assign an IRC channel for AHB? I chat on both oz.org and austnet. I'd be more than willing to start a channel, and it'd attract more people because many people already use IRC on one of those servers.
Perhaps a flash client for IRC would be a happy medium, allowing people to chat from the site or from their own client.
Edit: come to think of it, either sourceforge or cgi-resources have a good client called CGI:IRC. It'd do the job nicely...